specializing in digital media technologies

I began my computer consulting career in 1999 as a PHP programmer. For several years, all of the Web sites I created were written in PHP. (I have done a couple of ASP.NET sites, and although I find the technology and the development tools to be impressive, the requirements that you develop and run ASP.NET on Windows is a non-starter for me.) In 2005, while at the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference, I first played with the Ruby on Rails framework, released a couple of months earlier. So, like many people, I came to Ruby after seeing how brilliant the Rails framework was. At that time, there really were no PHP frameworks that were comparable, although perhaps the Zend Framework, among others, are close enough today. I wanted to talk a bit about how I see PHP and Ruby, but first, a discussion of frameworks… (continue reading…)

I’m very much a book person, I have been ever since college. You might think this would be the case as I write books for a living, but for many people there can be a big discrepancy between what you do and what you like to do. So, not only do I write books, but I love reading books; reading anything, really.

All that being said, although I do read computer books by other authors, even on the same subjects as I’ve written about, I just don’t think it appropriate for me to discuss or review these other works. I may make an occasional comment here or there, but generally I avoid doing so. There are two reasons why: first, I have an inherent conflict of interest, particularly when it comes to books on similar subjects as mine (i.e., competing books). Second, while everyone has different expectations of a book, as a person that makes much of his living doing technical writing, my expectations are likely more particular than most.

I mention all this because I often am asked as to what other books a person should consider. I can provide recommendations–clearly biased–regarding my own books but not for any others. Maybe I can offer up the occasional “this one sells well” or “I’ve heard good things about” but I do want to avoid full-on reviews and any official thumbs up/down. However, if you are curious about other books, you can post a message in the forums so that others may chip in with their own opinions.

As I’ve previously mentioned in my newsletter, I’ve just wrapped the third edition of my “PHP for the World Wide Web: Visual QuickStart Guide” book and, at this moment, don’t even have another book lined up for the first time in literally several years. I expect I’ll do another book or two in 2009 but no contract has been signed yet, so I’ve got some well-earned downtime ahead of me. Of course, down time is a relative thing.

I do have two or three Web sites to do in 2009, but even a fairly complex site requires much less of me than a full-on book, so I don’t consider those to be major hurdles. Plus, I need to keep my skills up and use new sites as an opportunity to try and learn new things. So how will I be spending most of my so-called sabbatical? (continue reading…)